Talk:List of richest Americans in history

Lack of sources
How is the half-decade section determined? None of the three sources cited in the article mention specific periods of being on top. This entire section may have to go. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Methodology
There is no explanation in the article of how a list like this is arrived at. It seems obvious that the wealth numbers are adjusted for inflation, but how? That is only one question that a good article would discuss. Another is the adjusted wealth numbers, not just ranking. A third is the nominal wealth. A fourth is how the nominal wealth is determined. Some of these are important. Zaslav (talk) 20:42, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

How does this list compare wealth particularly those of the 18th and early 19th century? They are all described as wealthy but without numbers it's impossible compare. For example Bazil Gordon isn't on the list but was considered the one of wealthiest of the time. BaomoVW (talk) 20:19, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

"Notably absent" in Fortune's Wealthiest Americans (1957) section
There is no apparent basis for the sentence listing "notably absent" people in the section on Fortune's list of wealthiest Americans. Some of these people were not yet wealthy in 1957, so their presence would have amounted to prescience.

I'll delete this sentence soon unless someone wants to take a shot at justifying its existence. 67.188.1.213 (talk) 03:59, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

"Wealth vs Contemporary GDP"
As far as I can tell, there's no reason to follow this metric. It is arbitrary and meaningless in terms of assessing actual wealth. Nothing else is measured this way. Unless anyone can provide a reason to keep using it, or at least voice a defense of it, I am going to rewrite/pare down the article significantly. Finnigami (talk) 06:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


 * No one has replied so I am probably going to move forward with this soon. I also recently had the thought that it might actually make a lot of sense to adjust based on contemporary GDP per capita. At least it would make much more sense than total GDP. However I imagine that would fall within the realm of original research so I will just be using normal inflation/PPP. Finnigami (talk) 05:54, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I feel like people are going to get mad when I do this change but I can't not do it if no one responds so I'll give one more chance. Finnigami (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2024 (UTC)